Blog posts tagged "Design"

After working on paper cuts for a year, I realized how disorganized many open source projects affecting Ubuntu are when it comes to improving user experience. I would often go to upstream projects with a list of paper cuts to discuss and have a very difficult time finding someone to discuss them with. Either the

An illustration supporting a talk by Dan Pink about the hidden truths behind what really motivates us.

I spent the first part of last week in a small room in London with Andrea Cimitan, Daniel Foré and Otto Greenslade working on the amazing Murrine theme engine and the Ambiance (and Radiance) themes.In a few days we accomplished quite a lot: a new expa

A new keyboard menu will replace both the keyboard layout toggle from Ubuntu’s doomed notification area, and the IBus menu for choosing a keyboard input method.

The new Ubuntu and Canonical sites went live today. As well as the visual refresh to include the new brand, the objective was to bring the sites up-to-date and provide a framework for them to evolve.

Icons are very peculiar images. They are both pictorial and functional. An icon is literally a picture, e.g., of a magnifying glass, and at the same time it represents a function, i.e., the query in a search. So, one and the same image is meant both to attract attention to itself and to facilitate action.

I’ve been looking for a local store which offers a colour sprectromitor and chanced upon the spyder3. I have to say that it is a total let-down. It doesn’t work on Linux to begin with. I feared this going in but the gracious return policy at the s

At the recent Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS), we invited Type Designer Bruno Maag from Dalton Maag to talk about the new open-source font design development for the Ubuntu operating system (name yet to be finalised but there’s a good chance it could be called Ubuntu : )). Bruno gave two talks – the first, an

Due to the weather and the layout of the hotel grounds at the Ubuntu Developer Summit for 10.10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) it was impossible to take the group photo outside and from above (which I prefer). The next best place was the auditorium in which the

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Today saw the start of the Ubuntu Developer Summit for our next release Maverick Meerkat. This sentiment on the final slide of Mark’s presentation will hopefully be the way that we bid a fond farewell to at the end of this insane week and I may well be motivated to blog about the craziness that

This is an early version of Unity, what will hopefully become the new interface for Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10:Unity comprises:A launcher that makes opening and switching between applications delightful.A panel where indicators behave uniformly.A view of your installed applications, with Ubuntu Software Center integration.A view of your

Using a single menu bar at the top of the screen, instead of separate menu bars inside each window, seems like a pretty simple change. But it’s more complex than it appears, and we’ll need lots of help.

“Windicators” are window indicators, on the right of the title bar, which follow the same pattern as the Ayatana indicators that Ubuntu uses on in the panel.

One of the first things I did when I joined Canonical just over a year ago was conduct some user research. The idea was to identify some broad areas that needed to be addressed and so I devised sessions that included topics like dealing with music and photos, browsing the Internet, chatting with friends, etc.

Drum roll please….After a *lot* of amazing effort from the Canonical design team I am pleased to announce that preliminary Ubuntu visual identity is online and available to all!.If you’ve never worked through such a process before the amount of work